Inheritance
by BrightestDarkness
Summary: A century after the Ethereal War, Posthumanity stands scarred, hardened, and vigilant of what lies within hidden within great bleak of the interstellar. Now, Gifted with psionics and endowed with artifacts of technology beyond their collective maturity to wield, the Union faces the civilizations of the greater galaxy as it comes to decide who they wish to become.


+HYPERWAVE ANSIBLE STABLE+

+ESTABLISHING MINDLINK TO BURNER-NODE+

+NOOSPHERE STREAMS CONNECTING+

(VOID-LAG: 0.213 INSTANCES PER SECOND)

+ADJUSTING DILATION TO PARASIM STANDARDS+

+ADJUSTING/...

.../ADJUSTED+

+PARASIM STABLE+

+FORMING PERSONA+

+ESTABLISHING NEURAL LACE+

+INITIATING DREAM+

_The world suddenly was._

_Gravity vectors and tactile sensations manifested in the ParaSim at the same time, loading suddenly as if Skinwalker willed it to be in a lucid dream. The sky stretched out and became known to him, the curve of the horizon sinking into the land a common neural imprint sold by the Shadow Lobbies employed by the Union. It was a bucolic portrait of Mars. Long before he was born there. Decades before the end of the Ethereal War. In the distance, writhing storms of ionic energy spilled out and linked between Elerium-powered spires reached out to lick the stratosphere. Raging stratocumulus fled across the planet by a psionic persuasion; even in the dream, he could feel the para-kinetic vectors press the storms onwards._

_Once upon a time, psionic geo-engineers used the amplifiers within their Elerium terraformers to make Mars habitable. They became a staple of the early frontier days on Mars, then Venus, and even still as the Core systems spun fantasy after fantasy of what it would be like to live on Rimworld, bioforming oneself to conform to the environment, bludgeoning the unruly ecospheres into submission to meet you halfway. Sensovids always neglected to mention how many were lost when to the False-Apotheosis, how many went over the Tetsuo Threshold._

_There were parts of Mars even now that remained so nulled that nothing would ever grow._

_+Jubilations, Commander.+ Her mind sang to him, the croon of her being akin to silken webs bundling an adamantium center, regality boosted by the chorus of her children and daughters and all the lesser minds of her Nest linked to her exocortex. _

_+Empress,+ he replied. She had once told him that Blooms-In-Shadow was the closest she had to a name. Something akin to a designation granted to her by a yahg mercenary pack that she had assisted in her years of youth, before she drained her mother taken the center of her dynasty's Great Web. Her people didn't really have use for names. Things were known between them in ways of reference that deviated from human understanding._

_+We come repaying the courtesy you delivered during our last dalliance. We trust that you find the sight of this construct... pleasing? Familiar? We understand that you were born on Mars.+_

_+Didn't grow up during the frontier days,+ said Skinwalker. +But yeah. It's Mars alright. Red. Dust.+ On cue, a flock of snapping glasshawks dove outwards in defiance of the storm, gleaming compounds eyes running in lines through the nanoweave that left the remainder of their skin translucent, prisms of light bending in the wake of their wingspan. +Few years too early for the hawks.+_

_Say what you will about the Scion, but know that they remember a favor, even if it wasn't one intended to be._

_He felt her skitter up beside him, her weight and size ponderous even for the lighter gravity in this dream of Mars. Dust, dirt, and rock broke and opened to the Empress's approach. Twelve ceremonially notched limbs bleeding dancing pools of dimorphic magnetorheological fluid that formed a pallid, reflective sheen that mirrored the Commander's reflection back at him. Her limbs were near as long as he was tall, rising a good two meters above the ground. He looked at his own Persona-the honest representation of his person in the present without any obfuscation. Hard angular face. Taut bronze skin. A trail of scars that cut upwards from the center of his lips to the gaps of flesh missing from his right ear. Coiling sprawls of newly-implanted artificial muscle traveled below his neck beyond what his exoskeleton obscured._

_He was looking at a stranger. The man looking back at him was too young. Too young to be nearing his 122nd year. Too young to be Commander. The revitalization processes denied him his age and scars. His genes themselves conspired against decay by way of modification. Here wasn't a man but another Ship of Theseus, serving as a vessel for a consciousness Gifted by the Void. He collected himself. His mind was the only constant that there needed to be for him. Change is a certitude by time. Matter is a variable for reconstruction. Minds are but canvases to be painted over._

_She was now next to him, looking out at the peeping dawn that slipped the dew of morning between the cracks of the storm. The whipping cracks of etheric lightning and nullwave energy danced in the reflection of her exoskeleton. Nanolaminated weaves of webbing graced her sternum and wrapped her abdomen in a queenly veneer. The strands were ionized to a luminous conflux of rapidly changing, epileptic colors. From her sternum were extended four pincers and two implanted hands made in mimicry of mammalian were clasped together. Through ports of webbing along her back twitched hairs sensitive to motion. On the underside of her rounded skull, her palps gestured her words beneath the opalescent glimmer in ten of her twelve optics, with but two remaining of the flesh._

_Two creatures of vastly different morphology yet the same proclivity towards viewing the parts of their bodies as mere modules to be modified._

_Perhaps she felt the same way as he did._

_Probably not._

_From what he could imbibe from her species during the Bleeder Wars, anthropocentric values and understanding was never the norm. She was an Empress to a Scion Dynasty. Her physical body was known to her only as the center that held a long sprawling web that stretched systems and planets. Connected to her were sisters, peers, rivals, daughters, and broodlings. On her command, the web of her dynasty expanded out by the yanking pullies of her Nestships. For her position, her daughters maneuvered and drained each other to curry favors and power._

_It was all an elaborate dance across her Great Web. The vibrations of which strummed the notes of her reign. A reign that would soon be cemented as a new arisen Great Dynasty amongst her kind with what they were about to do._

_+Commander,+ said Blooms-In-Shadow. +You are not one struck with paucity of hairs, you know what the Dynasty wishes.+ Flattery: most commonly deployed by Scions prior to draining a rival or adopting a peer-lacking hairs as being unaware. She was strumming a strand of her web, trying to get him to come to her. But then again, as she said, he wasn't lacking of hairs. He waited, letting the discomfort of the Empress stew as he looked upon her without expression. +The empire of the scaled-ones: we seek their unraveling.+_

_And there it was, just as anticipated. What else could it have been? It was only a matter of time. The Oasis systems held the last sector of the once expansive Tzynn Empire. More importantly, it allowed a straight transition towards the Relic. A detail that went unspoken between the Empress and the Commander. Matter of probable war should wait until alliances are concluded to consider._

_Skinwalker nodded to the Empress as he played at her webbing with the rhythm of mendacity.+Suppose it is.+ _

_Her palps expanded: excitement. +But I also suppose that we could just...wait. Tzynnians are going to pull themselves apart under their own weight. I don't see the need to suffer the loss of Meld and material toward a venture that's going to sort itself.+ _

_Her palps settled, excitement extinguished. _

_What Skinwalker told her was a variant of the truth, albeit one that fit the Union's rationale more than it did a Scion's. The circumstances were that even without the crushing pressures of the Union and the Empress's Dynasty closing on the crippled remains of the Empire, the Tzynnians themselves would disintegrate within a years time from the lack of energy, resources, and territory house and maintain the population density that were forced into their core systems with the two-sided invasion of both Union and Dynastic elements. _

_The lizards had put up an admirable fight for what they were faced with. Even now they tried to alter the course of tradition and possibility with the desperation only understandable by those aboard a similar burning ship. But it had been too little far too late. Centuries of decadence had crippled them developmentally. An economic system based on the back of prolonged slavery and a hyper-enforced caste system left them, ill-suited adversaries, when they transgressed their way into their own personal Great Filter by capturing a Starnest the Scions and raiding a neonatal settlement on the periphery of the Union's Rim just two years apart. _

_They dreamed of manifest destiny and that they were the chosen of the stars. In return, they were gifted an education that began with Fleets lost within labyrinths of webs and nest, that continued with sudden reports of gravitic anomalies pulsing along the edge of their rim. The loyalist patrols dispatched to investigate soon defected en mass towards regions unknown. What came next was a war without symmetry and five years of slaughter. _

_+This...confuses me,+ said the Empress, her mind's timbre divulging confusion. +I understand that the Union requires more room to spread-with special consideration to the Uplift Crises that persists to plague your Nests?+_

_+It does. But a few more years won't change that. Getting the populations to push the Rim will take another two years, I reckon. Nothing worth a hurry. Certainly not worth the cost of sieging a core system. Are you in a hurry, Empress?+_

_The Empress sank into a considerate silence. Her emotions weren't much alike to human emotions by any metric. There is no burning rage, nor outraged indignation. The closest thing that they could share with a human was the taste of annoyance, the needling flavor bearing some basic alignment as described by specialized empaths. +Yes. We-I am hurried. This is...you are forcing an uneven exchange? You have not de-tethered from me yet.+_

_Their conflicting alienness between cut both ways. Lying wasn't her kind. Nor was blackmail, deception, or bargaining. Such things were aberrant behavior for the Scions and were actively detrimental to the Nest. Of course, the values they shared in the rapid cannibalization of weaker kin and constant vying for greater positions within the Great Web of their dynasty was something entirely natural to them, comparable to a human seeking mastery of his skills or promotion within his circles. _

_+Potentially, but whether it is uneven is up to you to decide,+ said Skinwalker. +The Union's relationship with the Dominion, you are aware of it?+_

_+Quite so. News of your potentially joining Feasts travels through the Great Webs. The strands are pulling tighter between your Great Dynasties.+_

_Joining Feasts? _

_War. _

_She was talking about war. _

_+You wish for my Nests to assist you?+_

_+Nothing so dramatic. All you need to do is seal a few systems.+_

+_Force them to a narrower path, then; one that your Dynasty controls+ the Empress' palps twitched with consideration. Peals of strummed outrage shook out in echoes, the lesser sisters of her dynasty playing their indignation through the strands of the web-virtual and physical-tethered to the Empress. If she capitulated, her weakness would travel through each and every strand of her web. Her sisters will come bearing challenges. The Great Houses will dance to take the center-even drain her as she did her own mother. But from what the Commander understood, the processes to take the center from her has already begun._

_Her's was a choice of poisons. She needed the cluster to placate the growing mass of her Dynasty. _

_+Such a request-it is such a human thing. It feels of-of-+_

_+Temerity,+ said Skinwalker. +Termerity is the work you're looking for. Like calculated madness.+_

_+Caculated madness...+ Her consciousness shifted. Her head tilted. +It is an interesting understanding. Our exchanges always expand the spread of our knowledge.+_

_+Suppose they do,+ said Skinwalker. He spoke no more and let silence carry the strength of his will instead. The strumming of her Nests and daughters played on, discordant now to the originally unified tune of her Dynasty. There was discord within discord it seemed. Even without a proper understanding of their language, the Union understood that. There was a danger here of making a rival of the next Empress-one that was certain to come in time as was the case with the Scions. Agreements and promises were sacred to them, but only between peers, houses, and Nests. _

_After draining her mother, a daughter does not take the burden of her personally woven-pacts with her too._

_The Great Web playing through her like a tertiary instrument was still now. Her palps moved in open acknowledgment of the maneuver. _

_+You will have your blockade, Commander.+_

_+Then, you will have your war, Empress.+_

Inheritance

0.1

INSTANCE I:

_**COMING OF AGE**_

_"If it thinks, it can be subverted."_

_Asymmetrical Warfare_

_Magus Zhang Shao Jie, Director of Hierophant Academy_

_**Sol Standard Time: December 10th, 2185 AU, **__21 days to a century of liberation_

_**Tzynnia Prime, Oasis-Alpha (System), "The Crossing" of Perseus Bridge (Sector)**_

_**Operation: Shedded Scale **_

Minds are treacherous things.

The consciousness that drove the vessel had long been an entity of mystery and debate for the grand duration of human history prior to the war and the resultant calamities that followed. Even in the present, much of what made humanity Gifted, capable of containing and embodying the essence of psionics remained much an enigma. The intricacies of the mind, however, revealed themselves in thin slices of understanding with each boundary broken.

And it is within these intricacies that the asymmetry of war became standard.

Through a split Instance of consciousness, Skinwalker could see the expanse of the Oasis-Prime system unveil itself to him. The blemished glare of a sun-half bottled in an unfinished Dyson-construct came peeked out across the system. Five planets, three inhabitable, and a gathering of what few fleets remained for the Tzynn. Interstellar traffic came in ten million streams of light or more, refugees and broken remnants of far off colonies and lower-castes forced into class-parted light lanes powered by streams of photons. Their laser-grid was both apparatus of travel and war-a fitting construct materialized from the philosophies of the Tzynn.

It was telling that the defining bible of their history was a jewel-carved artifact that could be understood closest as the Almanac of Control.

+Trojan through the outer envelope,+ sent the mind of an Adept-Instancer "Sparrow" Atieno, the link between her and the hollowed princeling they secured a holding steady at .15 instances through the Hyperwave. Shifting to his central consciousness back within Realspace, he drew up the analytics on within the Instancers Amplification Chamber. _Threshold Index of Atieno's Cabal: 345/421. _The drain exceeds the cumulus yet, but not much longer. Soon the distance would begin to take hold and the False-Apotheosis would begin to call to them. With an responsive thought to his Metamind, the Command slipped back into the dream.

The layers of the Tzynn's light-sphere was a structure to behold. Five hundred years, 400 billion slaves, 300 quadrillion tons of prismatic crystallines, and billion more fusion reactors ported along the exterior of a vast titanium-carbide gimbal that held a titanic cluster of refractors at its core. It was an undertaking of equal pride and decadence; the murals of elder rulers engraved along the five extending arms that spun and formed the outer edges of the grid.

Through data pulled inwards from their trojan, the dream grew with clarity. Positions became known. The density of their fleets exposed their positions at key pockets in the sector.

+Damn,+ said Atieno, sounding begrudgingly impressed. +Know the lizards are slavers and all but that, that's pretty amp.+ An impish emotion bled from her mind into the link. +Wonder how much better ours will be when we re-engineer it.+ A flutter of euphoria seeped through the connection.

_Threshold Index: 410/421. Too close_.

+Sparrow?+

+We're fine _Skinwalker_,+ replied Sparrow. +Just a light minute further.+ Something resembling a giggle bled over. +I can-can almost taste the minds of his kin.+

Onward through the inner envelope of the Lightsphere emerged the trojan, inbound towards the second-planet ever colonized by the Tzynn, a tropical body that's the only lament was its diminutive size. They called it _Ful-dyn: _Grain-Oasis_. _Through what was once a fog of war within the system, light flooded the construct of the dream as awareness was spread. Two fleets stood on standby out outposts and stations within the belt. Outward towards the proxy came a tight-beam transmission rising from the capital of the planet to the trojan.

+Sparrow, the subvert's neuro-stability?+

+Optimal,+ she chuckled. +Wonderful, actually. The para-algorithms should even let make him sing without any over the linguistic partition-+ A stabilizing feed of solace poured into her mind. Her baseline reformed. +Sorry, boss.+

+It's fine. If you need to break now, then start the fire and transfer your instance back.+

+No, we'll make it?+ she sent, determined.

_455/421. 24 seconds to the Tetsuo Threshold. _

A broken garble of hisses and snarling came third-hand through Sparrow's mind. Through Sparrow's Instance, he could hear the lagging translation aboard the trojan.

_"Prince Gtherl," _came transmission from Oasis, "_you honor us with your return. The rim-"_

_"Have the fleets prepared for war," _replied the Subvert, voice devoid of emotion. Skinwalker felt a readied tension rise within. The obviousness of a Subverted mind was clear to him-possibly from how many times he had experienced the sensation and the glaring neurosis that was instilled within the subject. For near-century that had passed, the Union had only managed to ape the prowess that the Ethereals achieved in their fading might.

_"War? Scale-brighter than mine, I must-"_

_"Prepare the fleet," _came the deadened response. "_Or be made of use."_

A silence went across the line.

+Made of use?" asked Skinwalker.

+Degloved and tanner for leather," said Sparrow, the stabilizing breaths by her body in Realspace crossing over with the cumulus building within her amp-chamber.

+Delightful.+

"_The fleets are assembling, my prince. But your father the king-"_

The transmission was cut.

Just in time.

Aboard the bridge of the Tzynn Dreadnought _Evergale, _the Subvert twitched as the link through the Hyperwave came in broken fragments of connection. Sparrow attempted to reobtain control of the Subvert but the lag became too great to claim even with the support of her Cabal. In those final moments, Skinwalker felt the third-hand hemorrhage within the Subvert as vessels in his overloaded brain began to tear and burst within its overloaded skull.

_502/421. 2.3 seconds to the Tetsuo Threshold. _

+E-entering stasis.+

A discomforting snap of something jerked through Skinwalkers mind and Sparrow and her Cabal were shut off from him.

+_Meta, condition of amp-chamber Sparrow?+ _

_+Sealed,+ _replied an echo of his own voice. The Submind Intelligence imprinted from his own consciousness interfaced with the other Metas within the ship to array quick response orders pulled from his central subconsciousness. +R_eserve Cabals en route to drain cumulus.+_

Good. The math that they did for the build-up was close but it had paid off.

Pull his Instance further out from the central construct of the localized dream, he watched as a series of other inception-points ignited through the Tzynn Central Cluster.

+This is Skinwalker, Trojan-Alpha, on-point, sync,+ he sent out.

When Instancing, every tenth of second was dilated to feel like a Realspace-minute. As such, the in-between involved anxiety and waiting, much like wars of old. Unlike wars of old, the strategic battlefront ran the length of systems. Looking across the cluster, he drew upon the slightest drip of his own Gift and eroded nervousness into focus.

_Carry the momentum, or be swept aside by it, _came the remembered voice of Magus Zhang, back on Hierophant Academy. Relic of the long-dead 21st century that he was, his was a mind weaned from the war that came to define the way they fought. In the present, his wisdom remained.

Through the silence of the Void, the responses came.

+Yellowstone here, Trojan-Beta, ready to engage.+

+Smoker callin'. Trojan-Gamma, ready for release.+

A strum of webs cut into the Hyperwave in carried discordant static, a chorus to an emotionally distraught message. +Redshirt here. The fuckin' spiders have spun their creepy-ass fuckin' quantum entanglement webs and I want to get the fuck off out of this Nestship so can we can please start the war now? Sir.+

+They lay eggs in any of your holes yet, Redshirt?+

+Fuck you, Smoker.+

+Skinwalker to all units, prepare to engage on my command.+ Skinwalker shifted his mind back to the _Evergale_. +Specialist Kelly? Status?+

The corpse of the Subvert had been tossed to the Bioforms, now gleefully converting the biomatter of the dead Tzynn prince to a useful cocoon. In the Prince's smart-matter dais, warping in groaning protest against her sheer mass, the Cobra-morphed Jane straightened a forming baseball cap constructed by her exoskeleton's holo-coating function, an uncanny grin spreading across her lipless features. Around her, specialized Bioforms cultured from the amalgam of Tzynn and Viper genetics manned the stations, AR haptics created from smart-matter acclimating them with relative ease. Across the Captain's interface, the permission to deliver the first payload flashed enticingly at the Jane in Tyznn script. +It's about time. Fuse is set and ready to blow.+

From the stern of the 5-kilometer prismatic-sculptural dreadnought that was the _Evergale, _neurally-stapled slaves gleefully moved the antimatter warheads into their slots by order the radio commands received; their long-neutered minds holding no room for suspicion, only compliance. The light sails of the ship dim as the fusion drives divert full power to the primary refractors, funneling beams of focused energy out through the gulf hollowed gulf at the center of the vessel. Through the crystalline hull of the ship, luminous hues came alight as emergency tight beams dotted its receivers.

_Seize the momentum. _

Across all streams within their closed Node within the Noosphere, Skinwalker's mind spoke clear and loud. +Light it.+

...

**ParaCodex**

**Noosphere: A psionically constructed Para-network. It uses the psionic power of Gestalts and Cabals (amplified or not) to function and inhabits ParaSimulated lucid-dream manifestations within organic minds as pseudo-servers. A brainchild of Lily Shen, the Chief Gestalt Trustee of Lifetree.**

**ParaSim: ParaSimulations or Para-Realities are mental constructs formed within focused dreams focused by psionics. It allows fast absorption of information, entertainment, and acclimation of data for all Gifted individuals and has even been adopted by some outer civilizations for their own benefit. **

**Burner-Nodes: Flash-cloned human minds with an imprinted memory template that are meant to dream and are designed to be recycled afterward. Most often used by Instancers, "Fogcoaters," and agents of the Shadow Lobby/other near-Union civilizations as to prevent any direct subversions of their personal minds through the funnel of the Burner they are tethered to. **

**Instancing/Instancer: There are two meanings to instancing: the first is a highly dangerous psionic technique within the telepathic discipline which involves the splitting of the main consciousness into fragmented instances in dilated moments of time while the majority of their awareness still rests in Realspace. For those beneath a 250 rating, the ability is impossible to achieve and results in immediate fraying and madness. For those above a 500 threshold, a Metamind is still required due to the sheer strain it places on an unlaced mind. **

**The second meaning is related to the transference of neural data across the Noosphere which details how many standard fractions of consciousness cross per second of Void-lag.**

**Instancer is an individual that operates much akin to a specialist during the days of the Ethereal War. Theirs is the domain of technology/psionic subversion and are often the only other individuals in the battlefield that might be granted a Meta (if the meet the threshold). Most non-XCOM assets still use Noolink neuralware.**

**XCOM: [Redacted]**

**Commander: Modeled and designed in the image of the now-mythical leader of humanity's uprising against the Ethereals, a Commander serves as warrior, diplomat, and overseer for of the Union across its Rimworlds and beyond. Commanders run theatres of war across and beyond Union sectors, often blurring the lines between ambassador and saboteur for rival polities. Few possess the aptitude to even be considered by candidacy considering the requirements relating to combat experience, strategic acumen, administrative ability, psionic-indexing, and capabilities within the four major branches of psionics. Currently, they number only eight in active service.**

**Metamind: A Psionically-imprinted, Meld-grown cybernetic Submind Intelligence that offers immense neural processing to Commanders much in the same way a gridlinked AI would while bypassing the possibility of rampancy or usurpation. The submind operates in conjunction to the power of the Gifted, deriving processing power from psionics and allowing for rapid instancing, enhanced intrapthy, ParaSimulation, and a plethora of other options that would be impossible for an "unlaced" Commander. Currently only available to XCOM due to production costs.**

**The Interstellar Union of Sol: The Union of Sol is the closest approximation post-humanity has to a unified government. With over a thousand different polities, uplifts, post-human species, and bioforms left sprawling across the 9 core systems and 108 periphery colonies, the primary function of governance for the multitude of polities of humanity and their peers happens within Olympus Mons, at the Interstellar Senate.**

**Jane(s): A clone of the legendary Jane Kelly from the days of the Uprising, whom by virtue of immense neural plasticity and mental fortitude has provided the solution to the logistical stop-gap of numbers that faced the Union during middle of the Ethereal war. Flash-cloned and heavily modified by cybernetics or genetic enhancements to fit whatever the combat environment demands, a Jane is the quintessential, but ultimately expendable shock trooper for the Union in their expansion along the length of Orion and beyond. Often times they also have a Lance of Bioforms imprinted to them as additional assets they direct in combat.**

**Bioform: The most basic unit of the Union's military force. Bioform are Meld-grown, flash imprinted and implanted with psionic chips that allow easy of control by any and all Union operator towards whatever end they deem necessary. A near ethics violation due to their barest hint of sapience, the base genetic template of a combat-ready Bioform is the **

**The Scion Dynastics: At first glance, the Scions resemble an arachnophobe's nightmare made manifest and boosted with an overdrive serum. However, far from being a species of sub-sapient, bloodthirsty arachnids-or even arachnids at all-the uncountable number Nests**


End file.
